Duskfire Glacier gonakru

they're dead.
she said it to herself long. she said it to herself often. no more grief. no more pain. 
no more loss.
another unsuccessful hunt ended with the girl swallowing mouthfuls of snow before she found an abandoned caribou bone to crack open with her teeth. 
druid is here. her sister was safe as long as she was here.
something was happening to heda's spirit. the cold had begun to creep inside.

If Duskfire were soon to move, Taktuq thought it quite futile to focus her time on memorizing the territory of their glacial land. Rather, she looked to acquaint herself with her new packmates, for these were the ones who would remain constant, even as the terrain and scenery around them changed. And it seemed most pertinent that she acquaint herself with these packmates sooner rather than not, well before moving to even unfamiliar ground with them, that she might have at least something familiar to ground her in this shifting village.

So when she caught sight of the other chewing on a bone, Taktuq neared with a low and amiable wave of her tail. "Fine prize there," she remarked with a glance to the bone, no doubt once belonging to a formidable creature,  one she reckoned this village had hunted in days long past. She tipped her head with a curious tilt, "did you help take down the beast which gave that bone to you?"

heda didn't recognize the girl who approached. she dropped the ivory and looked up. the other was beautiful in a way the girl could not yet understand, and she found herself staring before she belatedly shook her head. "uh, it was moonglow. i think. maybe both packs. at the time i was with rivenwood."
she swallowed and hated herself for an intense moment before moving on. "you're new. i am too. i'm heda," the girl offered with a half-hearted wave of her tail. "uhum, do you want some?" she said of the bone, having not yet cracked all the marrow from it.

The girl seemed nervous, so Taktuq sat down with an easy smile, and hoped she might give some calm assurance to the other. She was young, younger than she. Taktuq read her youth through her willowy frame and gangly legs, and every stumbling word, and remembered the short year ago when she had been there, too.

Rivenwood, Moonglow. They were gibberish names, but Taktuq would do what she could to hold onto them, ascertaining that they were of importance to Duskfire, if they now possessed a member who had belonged to one, and a bone that had once been hunted alongside the other.

"I'd love to share with you. Thank you," Taktuq said through the soft curve of her smile. "I am Taktuq. And you are right that I am new," this commonality set her at ease, "I have not heard of Rivenwood or Moonglow," she said as she shuffled closer to Heda to share in the marrow, but only so close as the other girl would invite, "I was born of Easthollow, not too many days from here."

heda pushed the bone over to taktuq, no longer hungry despite the fact it had been a long time since her last full meal. "i have not heard of easthollow. what is it like?" the girl was willing to seize any opportunity that presented itself to take her mind off what had gone on and what was still happening.
"are you like the others? um, issorartuyok and qaniit and tuuluuwaq? they are 'northerners,'" heda suggested, looking to her new companion. "like moonglow. those wolves are also from the north. well, lots of them. the one who calls herself moonwoman, kukutux, i think she taught the others."

Taktuq received the bone with a gentle clasp of her jaws and considered Heda's question. What was Easthollow like? A mosaic of feelings and half-faded memories all stacked upon each other, some strong as the North, some hardly more than a scent. "My mother died there," she finally said, and ran her gaze along the bone, "but I was loved." She realized only then that perhaps that was not what Heda was asking, and she added with a flush, "the land was pretty. Perhaps you might come with me when I go to see it again."

At Heda's next question, she shook her head, "no, my father was a northerner, but my mother was born to these Wilds. In some ways, I am like the others, but in many ways, I am not." She accompanied this with a shrug. Being of the South had never hindered her before. She felt as though a woman of the north, through and through. "Tell me more of Moonglow, and of Kukutox. I have never heard of them, only in what you speak." And as Heda spoke, she would begin to chew their bone.

taktuq had a melodic way to her voice that kept heda's attention trained. she was sad to tink that such a gentle person had lost anyone at all, least of which was her mother. she thumped her tail and smiled. "i would like to see easthollow. i am sorry you lost your mom."
a moment of silence. heda squared her shoulder. "kukutux calls herself moonwoman. she is like — she is a mother and a teacher. she knows how to cure caribou skins. but they're mostly hunters, i think. this was their uhum, winter hunting. they traveled from their packland for a while, into the taiga, to hunt with anyone who wanted to join them. we took down a lot of kills."
"i think you would like her." heda certainly did.

She wished to see Easthollow. Something warm bubbled up within. "Perhaps we will even pass Easthollow on our way to the new lands Lane and Issorartuyok will deliver us to," she said with a smile, and a nod of her head was all she gave to Heda's sympathy.

"I believe you are right. The words you share make me like her already!" Kukutux sounded much like the elders of her own lands - at least the ones she had grown up in after she had left the Wilds. "She sounds like she has much wisdom to learn from." She wondered briefly if Heda had learned any of these skills while Kukutux had ran with them in the Taiga. Instead her words wandered to the pack her companion had mentioned before, but had said nothing on: "But you are not a northerner, and not of Moonglow. Are you of Rivenwood, then?"

rivenwood. "yeah, that's right. i was born there." she swallowed and looked away, trying not to glance toward the bypass. and she didn't really know how to answer any more questions if taktuq had them. "kukutux, when she was here, she had my sister and our friend at their ... ulax. she taught us some stuff. i know how to clean a pelt now."
talking with the other wolf was strangely warming. "you said you were of the wilds and you were not." her redcapped ears swung forward. "does that mean you want to make the wilds your home?"
and what was being a northerner exactly? but heda didn't ask that.